What's Hidden In The Snow
by HorcruxesandHallows
Summary: Magic, murder, an evil-stepmother... It's the stuff of fairy tales. Eira can run, but she can't hide. The huntsman is after her. Loosely based on the fairy tale, Snow White.


**What's Hidden In The Snow**

**Chapter One**

The ground folded in on itself, filling the grave with a mixture of soil and rain. It had been a traditional funeral. Rosanna, wife of the recently deceased Adric Katharous, had wanted her husband to be buried in a large white tomb in some graveyard at the other side of the country, but Eira, daughter of the recently deceased, had insisted that he be buried beside his first wife in the garden. It had been the only thing she had had the strength to insist upon. Her father would be buried with her mother, as he had always wanted. She would not let Rosanna have her own way. Not over this.

She stood by the graveside long after it had been filled in, after all those present had gone back inside the house, the rain soaking through her dress and causing her hair, previously scraped back into a neat bun, to stick to her face and the back of her neck. Her only family and her only friend. The war, she thought; it did no good for any of us. No-one was winning, everyone was losing. She wasn't sure what had killed her father – whether it was this wretched war or that wretched woman – but she despised them both, and, in any case, it was hard to care any more. All she wanted was her father back.

Eira avoided the relatives, packed into the whole of downstairs like sardines, and hid herself in her bedroom. From where she sat on her bed she could see the fresh grave and the lilies she had placed upon it. Rosanna had bought a vulgar wreath of red roses but Eira had burned them the minute everyone had disappeared inside.

Rosanna was a horrific person. She loved no-one. Her heart belonged to Adric's money; it was, after all, the reason she had married him. The marriage for Adric had been one of convenience – to provide a mother for his three-year-old daughter after the bereavement of her own – but Eira could never and would never like Rosanna. She was not her mother, and she never would be.

x

Rosanna Katharous, recently widowed, enjoyed the sudden silence as the last relative, Great Uncle Abernathy, had finally left. She took her glass of wine and set herself down in the armchair beside the fire in the drawing room, closing her eyes. The deed was done. The old fool was dead and buried. Natural causes, the Mediwizard had ruled; a heart attack. It had of course been a heart attack, Roseanna was not stupid, but the causes had been far from natural – the poison she had slipped into his tea each morning for the past six months had seen to that.

He had spoke of divorce. It was something she simply could not have. All he need do was prove that she had been unfaithful, and she had been so many times, and she would not receive a single Galleon. Adric Katharous should have known so much better.

She heard a Crack! and opened her eyes. A middle-aged man stood before her; thinning black hair at the front, bald patch at the back, hooked nose and thick spectacles, stained white shirt across a pot belly, and a nervous expression on his face as he wrung his hands in front of him. Rosanna surveyed Mr. H. Pembroke, Kathorous family lawyer, in silence, the only sounds being those of the crackling fire. She did not know what the H stood for, nor did she particularly care.

Mr. Pembroke straightened his tie. He cleared his throat and wet his lips, leaving his mouth hanging open for a moment before he began to speak. He seemed to be wrestling with some invisible force which was preventing him from saying what he had gone there to.

"Mrs. Katharous," he said slowly, an incredibly nasal voice. "How are you?"

"Cut the pleasantries, Pembroke," Rosanna snapped, a feeling of irritation already welling up inside of her. "What happens now?"

"Well, the thing is-"

"Stop blathering and give me some answers! When do I get my money?"

"There- There may be a- a... small problem." He took a deep breath to steady himself, flinching as Rosanna stepped towards him.

"Problem?" she hissed. "Why is there a problem? When do I get my money?"

Pembroke swallowed. In the semi-darkness of the room he could just make out the outline of Rosanna's wand as she held it down by her side, and he felt a sudden urge to burst into tears. "You don't," he whispered.

She didn't know what to say. He would not make eye contact with her but there was something about his face that told her that this was no joke. As she gripped her wand in her hand she watched Pembroke fiddle with his collar, his skin turning an unhealthy shade of pink and a single bead of sweat rolling down the side of his face. She knew that, if she touched it, his skin would have become much hotter than the average temperature.

"Why not?" she said eventually, as calmly as she possibly could, emphasising each word.

Mr. Pembroke swallowed. His throat had gone incredibly dry, his skin started to warm and perspire. "Your husband made a will," he explained, feeling an uncomfortable burning sensation spread across his body as he finished those words.

"No, he did not," insisted Rosanna. "He never mentioned anything of the sort."

"Well, he wouldn't." Pembroke paused to take a deep, laboured breath. He had become very hot indeed and was struggling to focus on the matter in hand. "You're not in it. Everything is to be put in a trust for Eira until she reaches the age of twenty-one."

Rosanna turned her back on the man, her wand still grasped securely by her side. His wheezing was an unwelcome interruption to the silence of the room. Mr. Pembroke removed his jacket and tie, opening the top button of his shirt.

"I don't suppose I could trouble you for a glass of water?" he asked faintly, closing his eyes to calm his dizziness.

Rosanna ignored the question. "What are the conditions?"

He used his tie to mop his forehead before stuffing it into his briefcase with shaking hands. "That's it," he said. "That's it."

"And if she should die? Pembroke! What happens if she dies?"

Mr. Pembroke opened his eyes and looked at the woman before him, piercing green eyes, long brown hair, a beautiful face; anyone could be fooled into thinking that she was not pure evil. But she was.

"She would have to die of natural causes," he managed, even though thinking was now becoming painful.

"And then?" insisted Rosanna, giving Pembroke a quick slap on the cheek to bring him back to her. "What happens then?"

"Next of kin," he choked out before falling to his knees, his briefcase clattering to the ground beside him.

She didn't seem to notice, too far away in her own thoughts. "Which," she said firmly, "as her adoptive mother, would be me."

A moan, long and guttural, like the sound a dog might make when it is in need of putting down, snapped Rosanna back into the present. The lawyer rocked back and forth, his hands covering his face. When he removed them, his bloodshot eyes stared up at her, a trail of blood leaving his nose.

"What are you doing to me?" he wailed.

"Me?" said Rosanna, kneeling down before him. "I'm murdering you."

A look of panic crossed his face as he was made to finally accept his cruel fate. As he fell down dead upon the floor, she heard a floorboard creak. She saw the shadow flee the hallway and heard the footsteps quickly ascend the stairs.

Rosanna stepped over the body, a wicked smile playing on her lips, her wand ready in her hand, and went to find her step-daughter.

x

That night, Eira had a dream. It had never occurred to her before how little she did dream, but when she woke up from her nightmare, she was grateful that it did not happen often.

She had been chased by a cat. It didn't sound like the stuff of nightmares, but she believed it was. The cat, with it's gnawing teeth and visibly sharp claws, had looked like a perfectly normal house cat – yet it had been the size of a baby elephant. She wasn't sure whether it was the cat which was large or herself which was incredibly small, but that had seemed of little relevance at the time. It had eyes as green as grass and fur as brown as the soil beneath it, and the speed of a lion, and no matter how fast she ran, it kept gaining on her.

She awoke just as the cat's claw sunk into her back. The room was thick with darkness, just a slither of the moon but no stars present in the night's sky. On night's like this, when she couldn't sleep, she would always find her father sat in the drawing room, somehow waiting for her. Eira couldn't see the grave through the night, but just the knowledge of it's presence caused her heart to ache.

Her mother had died of disease when Eira was two. Her father never spoke of her and she asked no questions. There had been a box in the attic filled with old photographs and Eira had stolen them for her own. She had her mother's red lips, her pale white skin and her golden hair, but her father's eyes, mahogany coloured, belonged to Eira.

She tucked her feet into a pair of slippers and wrapped a robe around her body. The house was cold, on the eve of winter, as she descended the stairs. She had hoped for a glass of water and five minutes by her father's graveside before returning to bed, but the presence of voices in the drawing room distracted her completely.

Through the crack in the door she could see Rosanna, her face filled with pure rage. She recognised Mr. Pembroke and felt her heart rate increase as she realised that something was happening that most definitely should not have been. She listened carefully, far away enough not to be seen but close enough to get a general idea of what was going on, and she was surprised to find that she couldn't believe her ears. Rosanna was wicked beyond human imagination; of course she would kill her for the money. She would do anything for it.

Eira looked on in horror as Mr Pembroke, a man she had known for almost eighteen years of her life, began to convulse, frozen in place by shock and disgust. She took a step back, the image of Mr. Pembroke burned onto her eyelids, and heard the floorboard creak.

Rosanna's head snapped up. Eira did not wait a second longer. She turned on her heel and ran for the stairs, stumbling on the first step but quickly regaining herself. She barricaded herself into her bedroom, seizing her wand and causing the wardrobe to collapse in front of the door. She could hear banging outside of it, the sound of Rosanna's sweet voice approaching, calling her name.

There was little time to do anything, hardly enough to think, but she had enough sense to push her feet into a pair of boots and grab her bag and coat before she Disapparated.


End file.
